Feather-Footed Frenchman

Before last week's big Wanamaker Mile, France's happy-go-lucky Marcel Hansenne thought: "Why should I spend so much effort when I could be leading an easy life? I must be a fool to run." It was his first race in the U.S., his first indoors, his first taste of a hardboard track. Marcel ran, but the effort he spent was not enough.

He chugged along, a half -stride behind the long-striding king of U.S. milers, Les MacMitchell. The 150-lb. Frenchman ran with feather-footed ease, his arms high, no pumping. He arranged to have fractional times called in French -- 2:12.4 at the half, tantalizingly slow for Madison Square Garden's fast track. Suddenly, with the finish almost in sight, Marcel ran out of gas, wound up third, 12 yards back of MacMitchell. Time: 4:19.

Twinkle-eyed, 29-year-old Marcel Han senne, a journaliste, never intended to be a runner. He took up basketball, found his endurance surprisingly strong, turned to running. But he still wonders how he became France's middle-distance champion.

As a gag, he went to Sweden last summer, blandly asked if he could enter a private, cutthroat mile race featuring Sweden's top swifties. Grumpy Gunder Haegg objected, then consented if Hansenne lagged behind the field, kept out of the way. The man Hansenne beat that day was the right one: Haegg.

In the U.S. Hansenne has conscientiously tried to avoid the pitfalls--overeating and high living--which threaten the path of every visiting foreign athlete. He does not smoke, prefers milk to whiskey, tries to be in bed by 8 p.m., cannot understand why there is no horse-steak oh U.S. menus. On his one nightclub excursion, he got a satisfying eyeful of American girls, cautiously explained: "It does not harm to look, no?" A rabid jazz fan, he keeps his hotel-room radio going steadily for entertainment, sings above it his current favorite--"The Hatchayson, Topeka and the Santa Fe."

As sports expert for Paris' L'Etoile du Soir, he confidently predicts that Sweden's Lennart Strand will be the first to run a four-minute mile. With the Wanamaker Mile behind him, Hansenne expects to give MacMitchell some uncomfortable moments in this week's Boston Hunter Mile. Experts agree that he is the most promising plodder to invade the U.S. in years, and that on an outdoor track he has Olympic class.

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